en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:44:33 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 176444106 Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.]]> 304 Ezra Klein 1668023482 Lynne 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Ezra Klein
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
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]]> 216750977

Biographical
Danielle Brown is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder and CEO of the wildly popular plant-based lifestyle brand, HealthyGirl Kitchen. She shares easy-to-make vegan recipes across social media with her millions of devoted followers who want to learn how to eat healthier, fall in love with cooking, and discover the secrets to making the best plant-based meals.]]> 256 Danielle Brown 0593961838 Lynne 5 3.83
author: Danielle Brown
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/29
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I want to make EVERYTHING in this book!
]]> 228110489 “Lily King is one of our great literary treasures.”—Madeline Miller

From the New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers comes a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, loss, and the lasting impact of first love

You knew I’d write a book about you someday.

Our narrator understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and their free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.

In the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit Sam and Yash. Best friends living off-campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. Youthful passion is unpredictable though, and she soon finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.

Decades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.

Written with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving story that celebrates love, friendship, and the transformative nature of forgiveness. Wise, unforgettable, and with a delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers, this is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.]]> 256 Lily King 0802165176 Lynne 0 to-read 4.86 2025
author: Lily King
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.86
book published: 2025
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]]> 218460339
Nastia and her sister Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades.]]> 352 Maria Reva 0385545312 Lynne 0 currently-reading 4.52 2025
author: Maria Reva
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.52
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]]> 222139778
A “Hollywood tale with heartâ€� about a reimagined friendship between Marilyn Monroe and a young maid whose life will be changed forever, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sarah’s Key. (Adriana Trigliani)

Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614. Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits.

Set in the American West in 1960 where the mustang horses run wild, an unexpected friendship unfolds between the most famous movie star in the world and a young cleaning woman whose life will be changed forever through the course of a few weeks. A testament to the enduring power of female friendship and a reimagining of a side of Marilyn Monroe that has never been seen before.]]> 320 Tatiana de Rosnay 1538770962 Lynne 4 3.95
author: Tatiana de Rosnay
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
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An interesting, yet slow moving story about a young woman who comes to this country and finds her passion for mustang horses. Also, she had a brief encounter with Marilyn Monroe so that part was interesting too. The scenery descriptions were lovely too. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 203166729 A married couple deals with the husband’s decline from Lewy body dementia in a profound and deeply moving novel shot through with Kirshenbaum's lacerating humor.It begins with of a man on stilts, an acting troupe, Ghandi. At first, these seem benign, almost comical, and are likely connected with an ocular issue. It’s something he and his wife can make jokes about. But soon he starts to experience other cognitive symptoms,Ìęmemory problems, disorientation. He’s a scientist, an auto-immune researcher, and still middle aged. Too young for Alzheimers. She is a moderately successful college artist. They live together with a cat â€� a pleasant, quiet New York City marriage. Then he receives the diagnosis of Lewy Body Disease, and its march of aphasia, difficulty with simple tasks, losses of lucidity.ÌęHe has a life expectancy of 3 to 8 years. There are moves as his care becomes more difficult, or he lapses into periodic and uncharacteristic acts of from Leo and his wife’s apartment, to his sister’s house, then an assisted living, then another assisted living, then hospice. Health aides, a continual outflow of money. His wife does what she can, but is able to do so much less than she wants. Watching him die â€� too fast, and yet not fast enough.ÌęKirshenbaum captures the couple’s final years and months together in short scenes that burn with anger, humor, love, and pain. With no sentimentalizing whatsoever, she tracks the brutal destruction of the disease, as well as the small moments of beauty and happiness that still exist for them amidst the larger tides of loss.]]> 400 Binnie Kirshenbaum 164129468X Lynne 0 to-read 4.20 2025
author: Binnie Kirshenbaum
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
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]]> 216052828 Inspired by true events revealing America's troubling past involving Pre-War eugenics practices, this emotionally riveting dual timeline novel brings together the lives of two inspiring women while exploring the timely and important themes of immigration, fertility, and motherhood. A revelatory tale of heartbreak and hope, it is an unputdownable story that will stay with readers long after the final page.

Jessa Gidney is a woman on the edge. Passed over for partner at her Manhattan law firm, she reevaluates her priorities, focusing on her deep desire to become a mother and her newfound interest in pro bono work. Her first case? An incarcerated woman named Isobel Perez fighting against a deportation order. An unsettling revelation about Isobel's health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. With her corporate law firm unsupportive and her husband, Vance, only concerned about the added stress while they're trying for a baby, Jessa is torn about whether to intervene. But when a shocking secret about her own family history comes to light, she is propelled to fight for these women, no matter the cost.

Nearly a century earlier in Virginia, seventeen-year-old, real-life Carrie Buck dreams of escaping her life as an unpaid laborer for her foster family. She yearns for a family of her own, a dream that seems within reach when she attracts the attention of her foster mother's handsome nephew. But he soon abandons her, and she's cast out, pregnant and completely alone. As a ward of the State, she is designated "feebleminded" and left to the mercy of a corrupt and heartless legal system. Her courageous fight for her own destiny leads to a landmark Supreme Court case.

As the novel alternates between these two women's stories, a startling connection is revealed. Tackling complex topics such as reproductive injustice, immigration law, eugenics, and societal expectations of women, the story is a compelling exploration of empowerment and self-determination. With a gripping investigation reminiscent of Erin Brockovich woven throughout, the tale is a testament to the courage it takes to stay true to oneself.]]> 336 Jacqueline Friedland 1400347300 Lynne 0 currently-reading 4.28
author: Jacqueline Friedland
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.28
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]]> 214151333 A breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normalâ€� life for a career in stand-up comedy.

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on an antidepressant. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

With her signature “deep empathy and insightâ€� (Booklist), Harvard-trained neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Genova has crafted another profoundly moving novel that makes complicated mental health issues accessible and human. More or Less Maddy is destined to become another classic like Still Alice.]]> 368 Lisa Genova 1668026163 Lynne 5 4.22 2025
author: Lisa Genova
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 5
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]]> 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Lynne 4 4.23 2024
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
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]]> 204158999 For readers of Remarkably Bright Creatures and A Man Called Ove, a warm, life-affirming debut about a zany case of mistaken identity that allows a lonely old man one last chance to be part of a family.

‘Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I’ll take excellent care of it.'

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred’s luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head—as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up.

Denise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard's facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter's health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.

As Fred walks in Bernard’s shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise's suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition.

Bittersweet and remarkably perceptive, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is a hilarious, feel-good, clever novel about grief, forgiveness, redemption, and finding family.]]> 336 Anna Johnston 0063397293 Lynne 0 to-read 4.28 2024
author: Anna Johnston
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
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]]> 212689360
The Bible contains many extraordinary stories of a sometimes benevolent, sometimes vengeful deity, who guides the Israelites out of slavery, across the Sea of Reeds and through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

Maggie Anton's The Midwives' From Egypt to Jericho brings to life this exceptional Biblical journey through vivid descriptions of what daily life was like at this time, epic battlefield scenes and a colorful cast of characters.

An Egyptian mother and daughter, Asenet and Shifra, a midwife and her apprentice, wake up on the morning of the tenth plague to find Asenet's husband and son, both firstborns, dead. Asenet's sister Pua, married to an Israelite, urges Asenet's family to leave Egypt with them, which they reluctantly do, along with Asenet's wainwright father and his two apprentices. Recognizing that the Hebrew god is more powerful than any of the Egyptians' gods, other non-Israelites join the exodus, including Hittite and Nubian palace guards. Once hearing and accepting God's commandments at Mt. Sinai, these two Egyptian midwives join the Israelites on their forty-year journey to The Promised Land where they tend to the wounded, share hardship and adversity, fall in love, and start a new home and a new generation.

With The Midwives' Escape, Anton has written an original and stunning recreation of the trials and tribulations on the road to the Promised Land.]]> 296 Maggie Anton 0976305089 Lynne 0 to-read 3.92
author: Maggie Anton
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.92
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]]> 129445068
In the wake of Joe Biden’s unequivocal victory against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Fox News anchors started to panic. They swapped out the truth about Biden for lies about Trump, and their stories about voting irregularities and “riggedâ€� systems fueled a fire of misinformation, hate, and even violence. Now, facing unprecedented billion-dollar defamation lawsuits, and with the 2024 election rapidly approaching, Fox is in hot water—and it’s only getting hotter. With the lawsuits dragging the network’s shameful secrets into the light—such as Tucker Carlson’s passionate hatred for Donald Trump and Sean Hannity’s contempt for own colleagues—the future of the network, and the Republican Party, hangs in the balance. Featuring Brian Stelter’s signature “thorough and damningâ€� ( The New York Times ) investigative prowess and filled with outrageous behind-the-scenes details,Ìę Network of LiesÌę is a page-turning, urgent examination of the insidious ways the media is damaging our democracy—and what we must do to preserve it.]]> 384 Brian Stelter 1668046903 Lynne 0 to-read 3.99 2023
author: Brian Stelter
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/19
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]]> 58275730 Woman on Fire. World-renowned shoe designer Ellis Baum wants this portrait of a beautiful, mysterious woman for deeply personal reasons, and has enlisted Dan's help to find it. But Jules doesn't have much time; the famous designer is dying.

Meanwhile, in Europe, provocative and powerful Margaux de Laurent also searches for the painting. Heir to her art collector family's millions, Margaux is a cunning gallerist who gets everything she wants. The only thing standing in her way is Jules. Yet the passionate and determined Jules has unexpected resources of her own, including Adam Baum, Ellis's grandson. A recovering addict and brilliant artist in his own right, Adam was once in Margaux's clutches. He knows how ruthless she is, and he'll do anything to help Jules locate the painting before Margaux gets to it first.]]> 416 Lisa Barr 0063040883 Lynne 4 3.94 2022
author: Lisa Barr
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/04/18
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]]> 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Lynne 0 to-read 4.22 2024
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 127280282 Discover the work of the greatest writer in the English language as you've never encountered it before by ordering internationally renowned actor Dame Judi Dench's SHAKESPEARE: The Man Who Pays The Rent—a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved Shakespeare.

Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...

Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green...

Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...

These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.

Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.]]> 400 Judi Dench 1250325773 Lynne 0 to-read 4.51 2023
author: Judi Dench
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2023
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]]> 215805887 Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events, from the New York Timesbestselling author of Lilac Girls.

“A dreamy beach book that also sizzles with tension . . . another winner by one of the best historical fiction writers around.”—Fiona Davis, author of The Stolen Queen

2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.

1942: The Smith girls—nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar—are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore—and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late?]]> 336 Martha Hall Kelly 0593354915 Lynne 3 4.23 2025
author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
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An entertaining read but fairly superficial. For such a serious subject, I was unable to find depth in the story. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER � An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

“PČč°ùłÙ Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brilliantly choreographed as a gold medal performance and will keep you guessing until its last page.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller-coaster relationship.

Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real storyâ€� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 Lynne 0 currently-reading 4.17 2025
author: Layne Fargo
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 212806569 A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey toÌępeace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofâ€�Horse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz � just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy � collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied waysÌęthose ofÌęother cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between soulsÌęthat exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.]]> 224 Geraldine Brooks 059365398X Lynne 5 4.34 2025
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/15
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]]> 216247489 Subversive and unexpectedly heartwarming, Sky Daddy hijacks the classic love story, exploring desire, fate, and the longing to be accepted for who we truly are.

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could.

Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marryâ€� one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.]]> 368 Kate Folk 059323149X Lynne 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Kate Folk
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> 161342932 0 Stuart Nadler Lynne 4 4.00 2013
author: Stuart Nadler
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> 220395156 Award-winning broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough and longtime collaborator Colin Butfield present a powerful call to action focused on our planet's oceans, exploring how critical this habitat is for the survival of humanity and the future of Earth.

Through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science, Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on our planet � and the one which shapes the land we live on, regulates our climate and creates the air we breathe. The book showcase the oceans' remarkable resilience: they are the part of our world that can, and in some cases has, recovered the fastest, if we only give them the chance.

Drawing a course across David Attenborough's own lifetime, Ocean takes readers on an adventure-laden voyage through eight unique ocean habitats, through countless intriguing species, and through the most astounding discoveries of the last 100 years, to a future vision of a fully restored marine world, even richer and more spectacular than we could possibly hope. Ocean reveals the past, present and potential future of our blue planet. It is a book almost a century in the making, but one that has never been more urgently needed.]]> 400 David Attenborough 1538772299 Lynne 0 to-read 4.80 2025
author: David Attenborough
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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review:

]]> 222376493 An astonishing masterwork of memoir from one of our most renowned and acclaimed writers, telling pieces of her own story in nonfiction for the first time.

“Why do you write?â€� the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews—all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide. She has been keeping up, she realizes, a decades-old internal correspondence, filling a silence she barely understands. And we, her readers, come to see that the question is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.
Marking the first time Toews has written her own story in nonfiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly inventive yet masterfully controlled; slyly casual yet momentous; wrenching and joyful; hilarious and humane—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her world and inventing a brilliant literary form to contain it.]]> 192 Miriam Toews 1639734740 Lynne 0 to-read 0.0
author: Miriam Toews
name: Lynne
average rating: 0.0
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date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> 217245557 In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.]]> 304 Isabel Allende 059397509X Lynne 5 4.02 2025
author: Isabel Allende
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this fast-paced inspirational story about the life of a woman in the late 1800's. It begins in San Francisco and ends in the wilderness of Chile. This brave, adventurous woman risks her life to seek her values and I have a lot of admiration for her. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 212232567 The Abadi Family saga begins when a modern-day Romeo and Juliette story betweenÌęa PalestinianÌęandÌęa JewÌęends in predictable tragedy. The family flees to America to mend, but encounters only more turmoil that threatens to tear the family apart.

In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi’s world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar’s husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister’s death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US. As Tamar struggles to maintain the integrity of the family’s Jewish Israeli identity against the backdrop of the American “melting potâ€� culture, a Palestinian family moves into the apartment upstairs and she is forced to reckon with her narrow thinking as her daughter falls in love with the Palestinian son. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar's determination to separate the two sets into motion a series of events that have the power to destroy her relationship with her daughter, her marriage, and the family she has worked so hard to protect. This powerful debut novel explores Tamar’s struggle to keep her family intact, to accept love that is taboo, andÌę grapples with how exile forces us to reshape our identity in ways we could not imagine.
]]> 312 Zeeva Bukai 1953002463 Lynne 0 to-read 4.60
author: Zeeva Bukai
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.60
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214864725 For historical fiction fans of women’s untold true stories, an early twentieth century novel about Jo van Gogh who battled the male-dominated art elite in her fifteen-year crusade to save her genius brother-in-law Vincent from obscurity.

In the tradition of The Paris Bookseller and Her Hidden Genius, the story of a real woman overshadowed in history by the giant talent she saved, Vincent van Gogh.

How did a failed belligerent Dutch painter become one of the greatest artists of our time?

In 1891, timid Jo van Gogh Bonger lives safely in the background of her art dealer husband Theo’s passionate work to sell unknown artists, especially his ill-fated dead brother Vincent. When Theo dies unexpectedly, Jo’s brief happiness is shattered. Her inheritance—hundreds of unsold paintings by Vincent—is worthless. Pressured to move to her parentsâ€� home, Jo defies tradition, opening a boarding house to raise her infant son alone, and choosing to promote Vincent’s art herself. But her ingenuity and persistence draw the powerful opposition of a Parisian art dealer who vows to stop her once and for all, and so sink Vincent into obscurity.

Saving Vincent reveals there was more than one genius in the Van Gogh family.]]> 384 Joan Fernandez 164742870X Lynne 5 4.69
author: Joan Fernandez
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.69
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:
4.5 rounded up to 5 stars because of the interesting subject. A beautiful story about love and art and women's struggle to be successful in a man's world. Not only was there historical fiction about art sales, there was poetry. Vincent wrote almost 1,000 letters with very profound messages which were interesting to learn about. I also enjoyed reading about the locations, Amsterdam, Paris, and more. It was great to see a woman who was raised to be weak, learn and grow. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 54717137 The story of one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her

Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical illustrations of dissections.

Women face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft's private clinic Nora is his most trusted--and secret--assistant. That is until the new surgical resident Dr. Daniel Gibson arrives. Dr. Gibson has no idea that Horace's bright and quiet young ward is a surgeon more qualified and ingenuitive than even himself. In order to protect Dr. Croft and his practice from scandal and collapse Nora must learn to play a new and uncomfortable role--that of a proper young lady.

But pretense has its limits. Nora cannot turn away and ignore the suffering of patients even if it means giving Gibson the power to ruin everything she's worked for. And when she makes a discovery that could change the field forever, Nora faces an impossible choice. Remain invisible and let the men around her take credit for her work, or let the world see her for what she is--even if it means being destroyed by her own legacy.]]> 384 Audrey Blake 1728228727 Lynne 4 4.08 2021
author: Audrey Blake
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
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I loved this story about the beginning of surgery under anesthesia. Especially since it includes the contribution made by a woman.
]]> 209784191 An unforgettable novel that captures the power of longing, loss, and love, The Time Keepers transports us from 1979 suburban New York to war-torn Vietnam, revealing that sometimes the most unexpected friendships can save us.

Two women from different worlds, Grace and Anh, are indelibly changed when a runaway boy is found on a street in their small Long Island town. Brought together by the love of this child displaced by war, the women find friendship and healing from their own painful pasts when their lives intersect with a mysterious wounded Vietnam vet. The vet, Jack, works at the Golden Hours, a watch store that mends timepieces—and might even mend damaged souls.Ìę

Richman interweaves the journeys of these wonderfully diverse characters who will grip, fill, and break your heart—only to bring them together with the care and precision of an expert watchmaker, one piece at a time. Inspired by the true story of a Vietnamese refugee who entrusted the dramatic account of her escape from Vietnam to the author, and also that of a wounded veteran, Richman sheds light on those whose lives were forever impacted by the devastation of that war.]]> 336 Alyson Richman 1454953233 Lynne 0 to-read 4.19
author: Alyson Richman
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 215198466 In his most exhilarating novel yet, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you from the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession.

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spyâ€�, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.]]> 272 William Boyd 0802164870 Lynne 0 to-read 3.87 2024
author: William Boyd
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> 222631674 From bestselling author John Boyne, a gripping and profound exploration of guilt, blame, trauma, and the human capacity for redemption.

In The Elements, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.

The narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the story unfolds, their lives intersect in unimaginable ways.

Boyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving investigation of why and how we allow crime to occur. With masterful, spellbinding prose, he navigates this complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty. The story resonates on a deeply emotional level, challenging readers to confront their own conceptions of guilt and innocence at every step. Amid the wildly engrossing storytelling, the book ultimately What would you do when faced with the unthinkable?]]> 496 John Boyne 1250410363 Lynne 0 to-read 4.68 2025
author: John Boyne
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 216522659 From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer, a taut, elegiac novel about a man trying to uncover the truth about the father who left him behind

Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy.

As Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood—his parentsâ€� legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend. Each conversation in the present reveals another layer of his father’s past, another insight into his disappearance. Yet with every revelation, his father becomes more difficult to recognize. And, with every insight, Steve must confront truths about his own life.

Rich in atmosphere, and with a stunningly sure-footed emotional compass, The Imagined Life is a probing, nostalgic novel about the impossibility of understanding one’s parents, about first loves and failures, about lost innocence, about the unbreakable bonds between a father and a son.]]> 288 Andrew Porter 0593538056 Lynne 5 4.38 2025
author: Andrew Porter
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
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This is a story about a man who is trying to get tenure at a university, as seen through the eyes of his son. The timeline toggles back and forth between when the son is growing up to when he is an adult. There is a lot of unspoken love, along with confusion, in both timelines. The writing is spot on. A very compelling read. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 220160172 In 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, and intrigue and a battle of wits in this masterful historical novel from the author of the USA TODAY bestseller The Square of Sevens.

Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.]]> 304 Laura Shepherd-Robinson 1668083094 Lynne 0 to-read 4.39
author: Laura Shepherd-Robinson
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.39
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 214537759 “Where are you, Mom?â€� So began Amy’s quest to solve a mystery trapped in the deep recesses of her own memory—a journey that would take her into the burgeoning field of psychedelic therapy, to the limits of the judicial system, and ultimately, home to the Texas panhandle, where her story began.

In her search for the truth, to understand and begin to recover from buried childhood trauma, Griffin interrogates the pursuit of perfectionism, control, and maintaining appearances that drives so many women, asking, when, in our path from girlhood to womanhood, did we learn to look outside ourselves for validation? What kind of freedom is possible if we accept the whole story and embrace who we really are? With hope, heart, and relentless honesty, she points a way forward for all of us, revealing the power of radical truth-telling to deepen our connections—with others and ourselves.]]> 288 Amy Griffin 0593731204 Lynne 5
I learned so much from this book. Such as appearances don't always reflect people's history and inside feelings. Also that with resources it is possible to overcome demons from your youth who are still influencing your adult life. And that surrounding yourself with loved ones is one of the best you can do for yourself. It is somewhat triggering but still very much worth the read. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.]]> 4.20 2025
author: Amy Griffin
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves:
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Now available! Also, an Oprah’s Book Club pick.

I learned so much from this book. Such as appearances don't always reflect people's history and inside feelings. Also that with resources it is possible to overcome demons from your youth who are still influencing your adult life. And that surrounding yourself with loved ones is one of the best you can do for yourself. It is somewhat triggering but still very much worth the read. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 217109836 On Being Jewish Now is edited by bestselling author, podcaster, bookstore owner, and media company CEO Zibby Owens.


All profits from the sale of the e-book, audiobook, and paperback will be donated to Artists Against Antisemitism, a group founded by Jewish authors in the aftermath of October 7th, dedicated to fighting the spread of antisemitism.



Introduction
You Have to Laugh
I Thought We Were Friends
An (Unlikely?) Activist
Jewish Mom-Life
Bling
Am I a Good Enough Jew?
Love Stories
Jewish Pride and Joy
In Loving Memory
Happy(?) Holidays
Represent!
Quiet! The Rabbi is Talking
Conclusion]]> 321 Zibby Owens Lynne 0 to-read 4.65 2024
author: Zibby Owens
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/08
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]]> 162505506 234 Zibby Owens 1662511191 Lynne 0 to-read 3.71 2024
author: Zibby Owens
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 123136728
Contudo, mesmo tĂŁo distantes do mundo, os seis astronautas nĂŁo conseguem escapar Ă  sua constante influĂȘncia. Chegam notĂ­cias da morte de uma mĂŁe, trazendo pensamentos de regresso e de saudades de casa. A fragilidade da vida humana torna-se um tema central nas suas conversas, nos seus medos e nos seus sonhos.

Apesar de tão longe da Terra, nunca antes se haviam sentido tão protetores dela, tão parte dela. Começam a refletir: o que serå a vida sem a Terra? O que serå a Terra sem a humanidade?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Lynne 5 Very creative and intriguing. 3.55 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
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Very creative and intriguing.
]]> 216247487
In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. Auster's book is modern fiction at its finest: bold, arresting and unputdownable.]]> 400 Paul Auster 0553387642 Lynne 0 to-read 4.18 1987
author: Paul Auster
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 150246193
In 1492 , during the Spanish Inquisition, Benvenida and her family are banished from Spain for being Jewish, and must flee the country or be killed. They journey by foot and by sea, eventually settling in Istanbul.

Over four centuries later, in 1923 , shortly after the Turkish war of independence, Reina’s father disowns her for a small act of disobedience. He ships her away to live with an aunt in Cuba, to be wed in an arranged marriage when she turns fifteen.

In 1961 , Reina’s daughter, Alegra, is proud to be a brigadista, teaching literacy in the countryside for Fidel Castro. But soon Castro’s crackdowns force her to flee to Miami all alone, leaving her parents behind.

Finally, in 2003 , Alegra’s daughter, Paloma, is fascinated by all the journeys that had to happen before she could be born. A keeper of memories , she’s thrilled by the opportunity to learn more about her heritage on a family trip to Spain, where she makes a momentous discovery.

Though many years and many seas separate these girls, they are united by a love of music and poetry, a desire to belong and to matter, a passion for learning, and their longing for a home where all are welcome. And each is lucky to stand on the shoulders of their courageous ancestors.]]> 272 Ruth Behar 0593323408 Lynne 0 to-read 4.10 2024
author: Ruth Behar
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61770319 With his dying breath, Lena's father asks his family a cryptic question: "You couldn't tell, could you?" After his passing, Lena stumbles upon the answer that changes her life forever.




As her revolutionary neighbor mysteriously disappears during Josef Stalin's Great Terror purges, 18-year-old Regina suspects that she's the Kremlin's next target. Under cover of the night, she flees from her parents' communal apartment in 1930s Moscow to the 20th century's first Jewish state, Birobidzhan, on the border between Russia and China. Once there, Regina has to grapple with her preconceived notions of socialism and Judaism while asking herself the eternal question: What do we owe each other? How can we best help one another? While she contends with these queries and struggles to help Birobidzhan establish itself, love and war are on the horizon.




New York Times Bestselling author Alina Adams draws on her own experiences as a Jewish refugee from Odessa, USSR as she provides readers a rare glimpse into the world's first Jewish Autonomous Region. My Mother's Secret is rooted in detailed research about a little known chapter of Soviet and Jewish history while exploring universal themes of identity, love, loss, war, and parenthood. Readers can expect a whirlwind journey as Regina finds herself and her courage within one of the century's most tumultuous eras.





]]> 353 Alina Adams Lynne 0 to-read 4.17
author: Alina Adams
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214961751 Secrets, lies, and second chances are served up beneath the stars at a picturesque mountain getaway in this powerful novel about love and family by the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends.

At the Vis Ta Vie inn, Reneé and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved home for good.

They’re not the only ones going through a season of change, though. Their guests include three couples in Hollywood celebs Leo and Penny are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce. Lucy, a practical-minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are struggling to find common ground. And former lawyer and current stay-at-home mom Sienna and charismatic sports agent Adam look perfect but are hiding rifts of their own. Thrown into the mix are self-absorbed single mother Cassidy and her sullen fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosalie.

The stage is set for a week of betrayals, regrets, and shocking truths that can rend the heart or heal it. Vis Ta Vieâ€�live your life—captures what it means to love through the darkness, and to find the light even after the magic fades.]]> 349 Rochelle B. Weinstein 1662520875 Lynne 3 4.22 2025
author: Rochelle B. Weinstein
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:
This is a story about four couples, one couple owns a B&B that is financially struggling. The others are guests at the B&B. Most of the characters are shallow and unrelatable which hampered my enjoyment. The setting descriptions are good. It does look like others liked it. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 53914938 The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of East-End London poverty, works the legendary code-breaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter—the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger—and their true enemy...]]> 624 Kate Quinn 0062943472 Lynne 5 4.42 2021
author: Kate Quinn
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
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]]> 213870083 A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,â€� a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,â€� a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,â€� Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.]]> 320 Curtis Sittenfeld 0593446739 Lynne 5
A delightful book of very entertaining short stories. They are all similar but with different characters except for the first and last stories. Something to read when you need to escape from a stressful situation. This author tells a good story. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.]]> 3.92 2025
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
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Happy Publication Day!

A delightful book of very entertaining short stories. They are all similar but with different characters except for the first and last stories. Something to read when you need to escape from a stressful situation. This author tells a good story. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 131967980 320 Maya Arad 1954404239 Lynne 0 to-read 3.95
author: Maya Arad
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209752317 The gripping true story of how leading Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023 by Tibon’s own father—an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures that led to Hamas’s attacks that day.
Ìę
On the morning ofÌęOctober 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli communityÌęless than a mile from Gaza City. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family’s reinforced safe room, urging them not to cry as gunfireÌęechoed just outside the door. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his “The girls are behaving really well, but I’m worried they’ll lose patience soon and Hamas will hear us.â€�
Ìę
Some 45 miles north, Amir’s parentsÌęhad just cut short an early morning swim along the shores of Tel Aviv. Now, they jumped in their Jeep and sped toward Nahal Oz,Ìęarmed only with a pistol but intent on saving their family at all costs.
Ìę
InÌęThe Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells this harrowing story in full for the first time. He describes his family's ordeal—and the bravery that ultimately led to their rescue—alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harm’s way for decades.Ìę
Ìę
Woven throughout is Tibon's own expertise as a longtime international correspondent, as well as more than thirty original with residents of his kibbutz, with the Israeli soldiers who helped to wrest it from the hands of Hamas, and with experts on Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the failed peace process. More than one family's odyssey,ÌęThe Gates of GazaÌęis the intimate story of a tight-knit community and the broader saga of war, occupation, and hostility between two national movements—a conflict that has not yet extinguished the enduring hope for peace.]]> 404 Amir Tibon 1761385895 Lynne 0 to-read 4.59 2024
author: Amir Tibon
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 163195593 New The Novel gloriously captures the search for freedom and opportunity at the heart of our nation’s history.]]> 0 Edward Rutherfurd Lynne 5 4.34 2009
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves:
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]]> 219319489 480 Wally Lamb 1668006391 Lynne 5 4.38 2025
author: Wally Lamb
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves:
review:
I was so very grateful to have received an ARC of this book. The writing is so clear and precise that we are compelled to continue reading this extremely difficult story. Corby is a fun, dynamic, full time dad to twin almost two year-olds. Unfortunately, he abuses alcohol and anti anxiety drugs which leads to a life changing event resulting in Corby being incarcerated. A very detailed telling of his time in prison follows. Doesn't sound like an easy read but the storytelling is perfect! I highly recommend this book. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 61897929 A gripping and timely debut novel by award-winning writer Buzzy Jackson, based on the true story of Hannie Schaft: a heroic young Dutch woman who joined the Resistance in Holland during World War II and became one of the Nazis' most wanted women

Hannie Schaft, a shy law student living in Nazi-occupied Holland, never dreamed of being a fighter. But when the lives of Hannie's two Jewish best friends are threatened in new and terrifying ways, she realizes she can no longer ignore the insidious rise of fascism in her country. Driven by moral outrage, Hannie becomes an armed member of the Dutch Resistance movement.

Hannie discovers her own untapped ferocity--wearing lipstick and heels to lure powerful Nazis close and assassinate them at point-blank range, bombing munitions factories, and becoming such a threat that Adolf Hitler himself dubs her the Girl with Red Hair. While humanity collapses around her, Hannie finds a chosen family of friends within the Resistance and falls in love with a dashing fellow resistor at a tremendous cost. Her greatest weapon is her determination to stay human (blijf altijd menselijk) . . . a promise increasingly difficult to keep.

To Die Beautiful is an unputdownable novel of love, loyalty, and the limits we confront when our deepest values are tested, told with the emotional resonance of meticulously researched history.]]> 448 Buzzy Jackson 0593187210 Lynne 0 to-read 4.37 2023
author: Buzzy Jackson
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
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]]> 217426321 The fiddler busking in the Columbus Circle subway station in 1965 is the Dekrepitzer Rebbe, the sole survivor of the obscure Dekrepitzer Hasidic sect known before the war for its rebbes' fiddling. The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among the Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, legal by Jewish law though forbidden under Mississippi law, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Shmuel Meir's devout wife, though she knows herself to be the Dekrepitzer Rebbitzen, is spurned by the Jewish community. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. But God gives the Dekrepitzer Rebbe no peace.]]> 262 Howard Langer Lynne 0 to-read 4.73
author: Howard Langer
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.73
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> 218431658
What if there were a cure for the broken-hearted?

Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal.

Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects.

On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way to the Poppy Fields—where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder—each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage.

A high-concept speculative novel about heartache, hope, and human resilience, The Poppy Fields explores the path of grief and healing, a journey at once profoundly universal and unique to every person, posing the questions: How do we heal in the wake of great loss? And how far are we willing to go in order to be healed?]]> 324 Nikki Erlick 0063349337 Lynne 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> 205363943 The French novel taking the world by an ultracontemporary Dangerous Liaisons about sex, feminism, and addiction.

Dear Dickhead, I read the piece you posted on your Insta. You’re like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past. you've had your fifteen minutes of fame. The proof? The fact that I bothered to write to you. Oscar is a B-list novelist in his forties. He used to be an alcoholic and a cokehead, but now he keeps himself busy by ranting on social media. When Rebecca, an actress whose looks he insulted, sends him an angry email, they strike up a combative correspondence—at the very moment that Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. What ensues is a no-holds-barred conversation about life under the patriarchy, and above all about addiction—to drugs, to alcohol, to the internet, to rage.

Virginie Despentes, the celebrated author of King Kong Theory, has written her breakthrough a Dangerous Liaisons for our time. We follow Rebecca and Oscar as they develop an unlikely friendship and argue over questions of right and wrong in a city—Paris—where pleasure, excess, and freedom rule the day, or used to. Dear Dickhead is a guns-blazing novel about a culture that makes men and women sick, and about how the search for feeling leaves us addicted to what makes us feel. The result is a provocative and unmissable book.]]> 304 Virginie Despentes 0374611610 Lynne 0 to-read 3.64 2022
author: Virginie Despentes
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> 207293744
As she approaches eighty, what she herself calls old age, Abigail Thomas accepts her new life, quieter than before, no driving, no dancing, mostly sitting in her chair in a sunny corner with three dogs for company—three dogs, vivid memories, bugs and birds and critters that she watches out her window. No one but this beloved, best-selling memoirist, could make so much over what might seem so little.

Memories fall like confetti, as time contracts, shoots forward, dawdles, and there she is, back in her twenties in Washington Square Park, drinking, having sex with strangers, falling in and out of love, believing in a better world. Whole decades evaporate as she sits in her chair, and a spider takes up residence beside her, who will become her boon companion for the next week.

Sometimes dread arrives, inhabits her body like a shadow and all she can do is write it away, pay attention to what catches her eye, sticks in her brain. Whatever keeps her in the moment.

Pull up a chair, have a cup of tea and enter Abigail Thomas's funny, mesmerizing, generous world.]]> 240 Abigail Thomas 1668054655 Lynne 0 to-read 3.94
author: Abigail Thomas
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> 212806636 A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.]]> 368 Allegra Goodman 0593730089 Lynne 5
I thoroughly enjoyed this interesting historical fiction book based on Marguerite de la Rocque. Her journey was fascinating and the writing was very compelling. Highly recommend this book. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.]]> 4.00 2025
author: Allegra Goodman
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:
Now available!

I thoroughly enjoyed this interesting historical fiction book based on Marguerite de la Rocque. Her journey was fascinating and the writing was very compelling. Highly recommend this book. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 215768414
On the brink of adulthood in the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters, hitting all the touchstones of early aughts fame—SNL, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine—along the way.

But after a whirlwind year in the public eye, the band abruptly broke up.

Two decades later, Zoe’s a housewife; Cassie’s off the grid. The sisters aren’t speaking, and the real reason for the Griffin Sistersâ€� breakup is still a mystery. Zoe’s teenage daughter, Cherry, who’s determined to be a star in spite of Zoe’s warnings, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.

As secrets emerge, all three women must face the consequences of their choices: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can they forgive each other—and themselves? And will the Griffin Sisters ever make music again?]]> 384 Jennifer Weiner 0063342448 Lynne 4 3.91 2025
author: Jennifer Weiner
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
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This story was a fun trip through the world of professional music. Love, betrayal, and a lot of songs. Also settings across the country including Alaska. I enjoyed the read! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Lynne 5
A beautifully powerful story with incredibly gorgeous scenery! While the premise is fairytale-like, the writing is so engrossing that suspending disbelief seems natural. To describe the premise, would not sound believable but this book truly is astounding. A mom and her 5 year old daughter move to a remote wilderness in Alaska, most definitely a prescription for disaster. However, there is strength and beauty to draw you in. This is a compelling read, I highly recommend it. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.]]> 3.69 2025
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
review:
Available today!

A beautifully powerful story with incredibly gorgeous scenery! While the premise is fairytale-like, the writing is so engrossing that suspending disbelief seems natural. To describe the premise, would not sound believable but this book truly is astounding. A mom and her 5 year old daughter move to a remote wilderness in Alaska, most definitely a prescription for disaster. However, there is strength and beauty to draw you in. This is a compelling read, I highly recommend it. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 60318595 The Plant-Forward Solution provides a wealth of easy-to-digest scientific evidence showing the power of plants for weight and blood sugar control, gut health, heart health, longevity, and more and explains how to make a mostly (but not entirely) plant-based diet a sustainable, lifelong dietary model. Charlotte also teaches you how to effortlessly reboot your diet in just four weeks without feeling deprived. After completing the reset, you will be fully adapted to a plant-forward lifestyle that will fuel your gut microbiome and will help you lose weight, increase energy, and achieve better physical and emotional health with proven long-term results.

The Plant-Forward Solution contains more than 70 recipes to meet an array of dietary needs. Many recipes offer options for gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, and more. Also included is a comprehensive 28-day meal plan with shopping lists, tips and tricks on how to boost your creativity in the kitchen, and more! Sample recipes

Peaches & Cream Quinoa Porridge
Portobello Pitas
Spicy Roll “Sushiâ€� Bowl
Rainbow Soba Salad
Butternut Squash-Three Bean Chipotle Chili
Glowing Green Soup
Fully Loaded Plantain Nachos
Sweet Potato Tahini Brownies
Chickpea Hazelnut-ella

Whether you are new to plant-forward eating or a lifelong follower, The Plant-Forward Solution will help you achieve health and happiness through a plant-centric diet that brings just the right amount of meat, poultry, and seafood to make it easy to sustain.]]> 321 Charlotte Martin 1628602252 Lynne 3 3.50
author: Charlotte Martin
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
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I bought this book because Veg News magazine published the mushroom barley soup recipe from here. That recipe is outstanding! Almost every other recipe in this book contains eggs or dairy. Some recipes even contain meat, which is not plant forward.
]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Lynne 5 4.46 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> 216351768
If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple wordsâ€�Let Them—will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands—and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbinsâ€�New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset—teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.

Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact. Within a few pages, you'll realize how much energy and time you've been wasting trying to control the wrong things—at work, in relationships, and in pursuing your goals—and how this is keeping you from the happiness and success you deserve.

Written as an easy-to-understand guide, Robbins shares relatable stories from her own life, highlights key takeaways, relevant research and introduces you to world-renowned experts in psychology, neuroscience, relationships, happiness, and ancient wisdom who champion The Let Them Theory every step of the way.

Learn how

Stop wasting energy on things you can't control Stop comparing yourself to other peopleBreak free from fear and self-doubtRelease the grip of people's expectationsBuild the best friendships of your lifeCreate the love you deservePursue what truly matters to you with confidenceBuild resilience against everyday stressors and distractionsDefine your own path to success, joy, and fulfillment. . . and so much more.

The Let Them Theory will forever change the way you think about relationships, control, and personal power. Whether you want to advance your career, motivate others to change, take creative risks, find deeper connections, build better habits, start a new chapter, or simply create more happiness in your life and relationships, this book gives you the mindset and tools to unlock your full potential.

Order your copy of The Let Them Theory now and discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words.]]> 311 Mel Robbins 1401971377 Lynne 0 to-read 4.17 2024
author: Mel Robbins
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Lynne 4 4.11 2024
author: Alison Espach
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> 210636431 An unforgettable novel that captures the power of longing, loss, and love, The Time Keepers transports us from 1979 suburban New York to war-torn Vietnam, revealing that sometimes the most unexpected friendships can save us.

Two women from different worlds, Grace and Anh, are indelibly changed when a runaway boy is found on a street in their small Long Island town. Brought together by the love of this child displaced by war, the women find friendship and healing from their own painful pasts when their lives intersect with a mysterious wounded Vietnam vet. The vet, Jack, works at the Golden Hours, a watch store that mends timepieces—and might even mend damaged souls.Ìę

Richman interweaves the journeys of these wonderfully diverse characters who will grip, fill, and break your heart—only to bring them together with the care and precision of an expert watchmaker, one piece at a time. Inspired by the true story of a Vietnamese refugee who entrusted the dramatic account of her escape from Vietnam to the author, and also that of a wounded veteran, Richman sheds light on those whose lives were forever impacted by the devastation of that war.]]> 337 Alyson Richman 1454953241 Lynne 0 to-read 4.19
author: Alyson Richman
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> 215361877
Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.

Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.

When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair?

Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.]]> 256 Colum McCann 0593241738 Lynne 3 3.75 2025
author: Colum McCann
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves:
review:
Some interesting information about the cables, breaking and fixing them, deep sea diving, Africa, London, and life on a ship. The rest was a slow study in relationships and mental fitness. I really didn’t enjoy the book but can appreciate how others would. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 214128353
Five years into their happily ever after, Isabel and Johnny are making the most of their second chance at love. Then one night, Johnny awakens from an extraordinary dream
and their world is irrevocably altered. Isabel does her best to give Johnny space as he struggles to accept the new chapter life has opened for them. But Johnny can’t do it alone—no one can. As the whole family is soon to discover, seasons change, but love never does.]]> 35 Alice Hoffman 1662522045 Lynne 0 to-read 4.05 2025
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 205478858
First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead.

How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation. A decade prior to writing The Rest Is Memory, Tuck read an obituary of the photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who took more than 40,000 pictures of the Auschwitz prisoners. Included were three of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from rural southeastern Poland. Tuck cut out the photos and kept them, determined to learn more about Czeslawa, but she was only able to glean the barest facts: the village she came from, the transport she was on, that she was accompanied by her mother and her neighbors, her tattoo number, and the date of her death. From this scant evidence, Tuck’s novel becomes a remarkable kaleidoscopic feat of imagination, something only our greatest novelists can do.

“Beautifully written, all the while instilling a sense of horrorâ€� (Susanna Moore), Tuck’s language swirls about, yet not a word is out of place. The subtly rotating images tumble out at us, accelerating as we learn about Czeslawa’s tragic stay in Auschwitz, the lives of real people such as the barbaric Commandant Rudolf Höss; his unconscionable wife, Hedwig; the psychiatrist and child rescuer Janusz Korczak; and the mordant Polish short story writer Tadeusz Borowski. Although we are certain of Czeslawa’s fate, we have no choice but to keep turning the pages, thoroughly mesmerized by Tuck’s near otherworldly prose.

In Lily Tuck’s hands, The Rest Is Memory becomes an unforgettable work of historical reclamation that rescues an innocent life, one previously only recalled by a stark triptych of photographs.]]> 128 Lily Tuck 1324095725 Lynne 0 to-read 3.96 2024
author: Lily Tuck
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> 218969862 A sexy, propulsive meditation on modern motherhood, tracking the lives of three women as they struggle to define themselves in the face of new obligations and heightened expectations.

Some women, with their perfect children and pricey athleisure, make motherhood look easy. But not Nicole. She never wanted to be a stay-at-home parent—losing her job left her no choice. Now, between her toddlersâ€� demands, husband’s distance, and father’s deteriorating health, she’s pulled in every direction except her own.

Something has to give.

Katrina’s in the same dissatisfied boat. After flirting with a handsome stranger at a bar, she’s ready to choose pleasure over responsibility. But when her impulse goes surprisingly awry, she must reconcile her reawakened desires with the realities of home.

Housewife Rose battles the constraints of motherhood in the â€�80s. Venting her growing restlessness into a diary of secret ambitions, she wonders whether it’s all worth it. Is an unhappy mother really better than a selfish one?

In a shocking twist, the women find their lives intertwined. But as they face their longings head-on, it’s unclear whether they’re destined for a breakthrough
or breakdown.]]> 363 Kim Hooper 1662526385 Lynne 0 to-read 4.73
author: Kim Hooper
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.73
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.â€�

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Lynne 4 3.98 2024
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves:
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]]> 217245548 Another instant classic from Carl Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud funny, tackling the current chaotic and polarized American culture (following in the path of Squeeze Me), with two wonderful new Hiaasen heroes

“The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he’d take him there after finishing an errand.â€�

Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads—in pure Hiaasen-style—into the depths of Florida at its most a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption. Figgo, it turns out, is the only hate-monger ever to be kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb and incompetent. On January 6, 2021 he thought he was defacing a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, but he wound up spreading feces all over a statue of James Zacharia George, a Civil War Confederate war leader.

Figgo's already messy life is about to get more complicated, thanks to two formidable adversaries. Viva Morales is a newly transplanted Floridian, a clever woman recently taken to the cleaners by her ex-husband, now working at the Mink Foundation, a supposedly philanthropical organization, and renting a room in Figgo’s apartment because there’s no place else she can afford. Twilly Spree has an anger management problem, especially when it comes to those who deface the environment, and way too many inherited millions of dollars. He's living alone a year after his dog died, two years after he sank a city councilman’s party barge, and three years after his divorce.

Viva and Twilly are plunged into a mystery—involving dark money and darker motives—they are determined to solve, and become entangled in a world populated by some of Hiaasen’s most outrageous Claude and Eletra Mink—billionaire philanthropists with way too much plastic surgery and a secret right-wing agenda—and Congressman Clure Boyette—who dreams of being Florida’s (and maybe America’s) most important politician. The only things standing in his way are his love for hookers and young girls, and his total lack of intelligence. We meet Noel Kristianson—a Scandinavian agnostic injured when Figgo thinks he’s aJewish threat to humanity and runs him over with his car; Jonus Onus—Figgo’s partner in white power idiocy; and many, many more. Hiaasen ties them all together and delivers them to their appropriate fates, in his wildest and most entertaining novel to date.]]> 384 Carl Hiaasen 0593320948 Lynne 0 to-read 3.98 2025
author: Carl Hiaasen
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/14
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]]> 202190435 A lyrical coming-of-age story set in the projects of Toledo, Ohio, Animals I Want to See explores themes of identity, ambition, religion, and friendship—often across racial and social lines—as it spotlights a family of fourteen and tracks a boy’s journey from a child janitor with big dreams to a teenage petty criminal to a student at Yale and Harvard.

On Bronson Street, in the projects of Toledo, Ohio, in a crowded house occupied by a family of fourteen, Tom Seeman starts a very important list. Just as the trash-strewn field in his backyard is home to a treasure-trove of wild animals, Tom’s list, “Animals I Want To See One Day,â€� is home to dreams of adventure in places far away from the downtrodden neighborhood where he lives. But for all its hardship and crime, Bronson Street is also something of a mythical street, populated by unforgettable people who share food, protect each other, and give surprising gifts of beauty and merriment, proving that the bonds of community and friendship (often across racial and social lines) can bridge any divide and transcend what many of us are taught to believe about each other.

A luminous coming-of-age memoir that shimmers with countless marvels, Animals I Want to See tracks Tom Seeman’s journey from a child janitor with big ambitions to a teenage petty criminal to a student at Yale and Harvard. At once a meditation on finding wonder in unlikely places, an ode to a heroic mother who makes the seemingly impossible possible, and an exploration of what it means to create our own identities, this is a heartwarming, thought-provoking, ultimately uplifting book for all readers.]]> 288 Tom Seeman Lynne 5 4.29 2024
author: Tom Seeman
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
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]]> 54627213
In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash . . .

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all�

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.]]> 366 Natalie Haynes Lynne 0 to-read 4.09 2019
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/14
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]]> 210680209 From the New York Times bestselling author of Kaikeyi comes an epic and daring novel that imagines an alternate version of India that was never liberated from the British, and a young woman who will change the tides of history.

Kalki Divekar grows up a daughter of Kingston—a city the British built on the ashes of Bombay. The older generation, including her father, have been lost to the brutal hunt for rebels. Young men are drafted to fight wars they will never return from. And the people of her city are more interested in fighting each other than facing their true oppressors.

When tragedy strikes close to home, Kalki and her group of friends begin to play a dangerous game, obtaining jobs working for the British while secretly planning to destroy the empire from the inside out. They found Kingston's new independence movement, knowing one wrong move means certain death. Facing threats from all quarters, Kalki must decide whether it’s more important to be a hero or to survive.

Told as ten moments from Kalki’s life that mirror the Dashavatara, the ten avatars of Vishnu, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion is a sweeping, deeply felt speculative novel of empowerment, friendship, self-determination, and the true meaning of freedom.]]> Vaishnavi Patel Lynne 0 to-read 4.26 2025
author: Vaishnavi Patel
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> 58884736
"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager
A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.]]> 353 Nikki Erlick 0063204207 Lynne 2 book-club-book 3.96 2022
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: book-club-book
review:

]]> 214537772 In this Civil War love story, inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines, the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger, from the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed historical fiction as Hour of the Witch and The Sandcastle Girls.

ÌęÌęÌęÌęVirginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.Ìę
ÌęÌęÌęÌęAnd then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy â€� but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible decision: Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?Ìę
ÌęÌęÌęÌęA vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.]]> 336 Chris Bohjalian 0385547641 Lynne 5 4.11 2025
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this book which takes place during the civil war. The characters were all interesting and well developed, the setting fit perfectly with the story, and the writing was compelling. It’s my favorite of this author’s works, of which I have read many. There was a lot of nuanced relationships which encouraged thinking, fitting together and hope for the characters. Some sadness and tense situations but also some cleverness. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]> 432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 Lynne 0 to-read 3.79 2023
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
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]]> 33989585
Countless others have rendered their verdict. Now it is your turn.

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.

Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water or even acknowledge her rescuers, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious young woman claims to be the Russian grand duchess.
As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre at Ekaterinburg, old enemies and new threats are awakened. The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling saga is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.]]> Ariel Lawhon 052549622X Lynne 0 to-read 3.68 2018
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> 212378278
When renouned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that's where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira's stories of her travels, and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she's left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she's living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party where all of Bombay society. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn't know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira's childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira's history, she learns that the charming facade she'd come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she'll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.]]> 352 Alka Joshi 077836853X Lynne 0 to-read 3.72 2025
author: Alka Joshi
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Lynne 5 4.37 2021
author: John Green
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/11
date added: 2024/12/27
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The author's personal take on cultural issues/items/events during the 20th and 21st centuries. Very moving, interesting, and often raw with emotion and soul baring. I learned quite a bit about Monopoly, Auld Lang Syne, depression, and more. Super interesting.
]]> 214204553 The English-language debut of one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Brazilian literature, Tokyo Suite is a gripping exploration of the complexities of modern family dynamics and the tensions hiding just under the surface of ordinary lives.Ìę

It’s a seemingly ordinary morning when Maju, a nanny, boards a bus with Cora, the young girl she’s been caring for, and disappears. The abduction, an act as impulsive as it is extreme, sets off a series of events that will force each character to confront their deepest fears and desires.

Fernanda, Cora's mother, is a successful executive who is so engulfed in her own personal crisis that she initially fails to notice her daughter's disappearance. Her marriage is strained, and she finds solace in an affair, distancing herself further from her family. Meanwhile, her husband, overwhelmed by the complexities of their domestic life, remains emotionally detached. As Maju navigates the streets of SĂŁo Paulo with Cora, the “white armyâ€� of nannies, a term coined by Fernanda, seems to watch her every move, heightening her sense of paranoia and urgency.Ìę

Madalosso’s narrative delves deep into the human psyche, examining themes of maternal guilt, societal expectations, and the search for personal identity. Rich and multi-layered, Tokyo Suite is a poignant and gripping tale that captures the essence of modern urban life and the lengths to which people will go to reclaim a sense of control and meaning in their lives.Ìę]]> 208 Giovana Madalosso 1609459806 Lynne 1 3.59 2020
author: Giovana Madalosso
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/25
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review:
Superficial and boring. Disingenuous sex of all kinds. Also, drug induced hallucinations and kidnapping. Some of the downfall may be due to a poor translation, but the underlying premise of the story is trite. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 217163697 #1ÌęNew York TimesÌębestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Lynne 0 to-read 4.58 2025
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 81069444 In the Garden of Eden, at the beginning of time, an outrageous lie is born: that women are inferior.

Lilith and Adam are equal and happy in the Garden of Eden. Until Adam decides Lilith should submit to his will and lie beneath him. She refuses - and is banished forever from Paradise.

Demonized and sidelined, Lilith watches in fury as God creates Eve, the woman who accepts her submission. But Lilith has a secret: she has already tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Endowed with Wisdom, she knows why Asherah - God's wife and equal, the Queen of Heaven - is missing. Lilith has a plan: she will rescue Eve, find Asherah, restore balance to the world and regain her rightful place in Paradise.

Lilith's quest for justice drives her throughout history, from the ziggurats of Ancient Sumer to the court of Israel's Queen Jezebel, and to the side of a radical preacher in Roman Judea. In the modern age, as she observes the catastrophic consequences of a world built on inequality, Lilith finally understands what must be done to correct the wrong done to women - and all humankind - at the beginning of time.

Inspired by ancient myths and suppressed scriptures, Lilith is a thought-provoking and ambitious novel with an evocative literary voice and a triumphantly engaging heroine.]]> 336 Nikki Marmery 1639105719 Lynne 0 currently-reading 3.63 2023
author: Nikki Marmery
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 181109972 What if calling someone stupid was illegal? In a reality not too distant from our own, where the so-called Mental Parity Movement has taken hold, the worst thing you can call someone is 'stupid'.

Everyone is equally clever, and discrimination based on intelligence is 'the last great civil rights fight'.

Exams and grades are all discarded, and smart phones are rebranded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word and encouraged to report parents for using it. You don't need a qualification to be a doctor.

Best friends since adolescence, Pearson and Emory find themselves on opposing sides of this new culture war. Radio personality Emory � who has built her career riding the tide of popular thought � makes increasingly hard-line statements while, for her part, Pearson believes the whole thing is ludicrous.

As their friendship fractures, Pearson's determination to cling onto the 'old, bigoted way of thinking' begins to endanger her job, her safety and even her family.

Lionel Shriver turns her piercing gaze on the policing of opinion and intellect, and imagines a world in which intellectual meritocracy is heresy. Hilarious, deadpan, scathing and at times frighteningly plausible, MANIA will delight the many fans of her fiction and journalism alike.]]> 288 Lionel Shriver 0063345390 Lynne 5 3.58 2024
author: Lionel Shriver
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
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]]> 199531966
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.]]> 400 Clare Chambers 0063258226 Lynne 0 to-read 3.99 2024
author: Clare Chambers
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/20
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]]> 219520778 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until â€� betrayed and brokenhearted â€� she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America â€� but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0593802721 Lynne 5 3.93 2025
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
This was such an interesting, attention grabbing book. Very interesting perspectives on relationships and cultures. I loved learning all the various names of the characters and the food. I also enjoyed the travel descriptions. Amazing story by a wonderful storyteller. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazineÌęeditor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]> 304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Lynne 5 book-club-book 4.07 2020
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: book-club-book
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]]> 50997476 In this dazzling collection of short fiction, the National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love—“one of America’s most important novelists and an international literary sensationâ€� (New York Times)—explores what it means to be in a couple, and to be a man and a woman in that perplexing relationship and beyond.

In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.Ìę

The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes ring through stages of life: aging parents and new-born babies; young women’s coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce, unwavering light the forces driving human existence: sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant, and brilliant, Krauss’s stories are at once startling and deeply moving, but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength.Ìę]]> 240 Nicole Krauss 0062431021 Lynne 5 3.62 2020
author: Nicole Krauss
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> 210689881 As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.â€�

What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman's harrowing survival, and another's struggle to excavate the story from under the sands of time, and her grandma's illiteracy. Chronicling the darkness of the past and the difficult (and occasionally comic) challenges of bringing it to life in a sunny Florida condo, this book offers an insightful look into the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren,
and the impossible pull of both silence and remembrance.]]> 218 Brooke Randel 1948954974 Lynne 0 to-read 4.23 2024
author: Brooke Randel
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> 127306192 New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.]]> 342 XĂłchitl GonzĂĄlez 1250786215 Lynne 0 to-read 3.76 2024
author: XĂłchitl GonzĂĄlez
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> 51016951 From Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM, the author of the New York Times bestseller How Not to Die, comes a four-color, fully illustrated cookbook that shares the science of long-term weight-loss success.

Dr. Michael Greger founded the viral website Nutritionfacts.org with the aim to educate the public about what healthy eating looks like and connect them with a community through food-related podcasts, videos, and blogs. Since then, Nutritionfacts.org has grown and so has Dr. Greger's platform. How Not to Die and the How Not to Die Cookbook were instant hits, and now he's back with a new book about mindful dieting—how to eat well, lose, and keep unwanted weight off in a healthy, accessible way that's not so much a diet as it is a lifestyle.

Greger offers readers delicious yet healthy options that allow them to ditch the idea of "dieting" altogether. As outlined in his book How Not to Diet, Greger believes that identifying the twenty-one weight-loss accelerators in our bodies and incorporating new, cutting-edge medical discoveries are integral in putting an end to the all-consuming activity of counting calories and getting involved in expensive juice cleanses and Weight Watchers schemes.

How Not to Diet Cookbook is primed to be a revolutionary new addition to the cookbook industry: incredibly effective and designed for everyone looking to make changes to their dietary habits to improve their quality of life, weight loss notwithstanding.]]> 254 Michael Greger 1250199271 Lynne 5 4.38 2019
author: Michael Greger
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/12/12
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]]> 78433 The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.

It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.]]> 637 Margaret Atwood Lynne 4 currently-reading 3.96 2000
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 181110028
It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister’s surgery. When she sees a young man—Omar—who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.]]> 321 Cristina Henríquez 0063291320 Lynne 3 currently-reading 3.62 2024
author: Cristina HenrĂ­quez
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 Lynne 0 to-read 4.05 2024
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/10
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]]> 16530 New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende celebrates the pleasures of the sensual life in this rich, joyful and slyly humorous book, a combination of personal narrative and treasury of erotic lore. Under the aegis of the Goddess of Love, Isabel Allende uses her storytelling skills brilliantly in Aphrodite to evoke the delights of food and sex. After considerable research and study, she has become an authority on aphrodisiacs, which include everything from food and drink to stories and, of course, love. Readers will find here recipes from Allende's mother, poems, stories from ancient and foreign literatures, paintings, personal anecdotes, fascinating tidbits on the sensual art of foodand its effects on amorous performance, tips on how to attract your mate and revive flagging virility, passages on the effect of smell on libido, a history of alcoholic beverages, and much more.

An ode to sensuality that is an irresistible blend of memory, imagination and the senses, Aphrodite is familiar territory for readers who know her fiction.]]> 320 Isabel Allende 0060930179 Lynne 0 to-read 3.72 1998
author: Isabel Allende
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/09
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]]> 157062582
Alors que l’affaire menace la rĂ©putation du Regency Grand, et que tous les employĂ©s sont des suspects, Molly se rend compte qu’elle a un lien important avec la victime. La clĂ© de cette Ă©nigme se trouve nichĂ©e dans son passĂ©, Ă  l’époque oĂč, enfant, elle accompagnait sa grand-mĂšre dans le mystĂ©rieux manoir des Grimthorpeâ€�

Afin d’aider ses amis, de sauver l’hĂŽtel et d’empĂȘcher un nouveau drame, Molly va se lancer corps et Ăąme dans cette nouvelle enquĂȘte haute en couleur !]]> 293 Nita Prose 0593356187 Lynne 4 3.75 2023
author: Nita Prose
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
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]]> 176443533
Nosh is the cookbook for the modern Jewish kitchen, drawing inspiration from history through a 21st century lens. Food is a central part of the Jewish culture, and those who don't connect with the foods of yesterday may feel as though a part of their heritage is missing. With the rise in plant-based eating across the globe, Nosh, and its more than 80 recipes, is an ideal guide for those looking to connect with and share their Judaism in a way that feels authentic in today's landscape. Author, food writer, and registered dietician Micah Siva hopes to inspire meals not only for the holidays, but for the simple joy of elevating beloved Jewish flavors into everyday life.]]> 256 Micah Siva 1685553273 Lynne 5 4.47
author: Micah Siva
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/12/09
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As an avid cook, going on my ninth year of being vegan, I thought I’ve learned all the techniques possible. But here are some new ones! I taste tested the mushroom brisket, Mandelbrot, latkes, cucumber, salad, and pomegranate lentil tabouli. All were outstanding! I also plan to try many more items from this book. Thank you to Toledo Jewish Federation for bringing this author to our small community and for the delicious event.
]]> 211497969
It’s the summer of â€�77 in New York City, and the only thing more unnerving than the scorching heatwave is the rampant murder, leaving washed-up homicide detective Richard Dietrich on edge.

When Dietrich investigates a brutal mob hit the brass doesn’t want him to solve, he goes from phoning it in to getting in over his head. Caught up in a mysterious second homicide with an even more perplexing perpetrator, Dietrich starts to second guess his instincts—and his memory—as he searches for answers at the bottom of a bottle.]]> Don Winslow Lynne 4 3.51
author: Don Winslow
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 44170501
Her meticulous plans get thrown slightly off-course when Marie attracts the attention of an accomplished young physicist, himself on the precipice of greatness. Thirty-five-year-old Pierre Curie, famous for his work on symmetry, believes he has found in Marie an equal who shares his devotion to scientific discovery. He offers to help with her work, and soon begins to court her. But to Marie, men have always been an obstacle, love a distraction from her goals. She hasn't come this far to let either stand in the way of her dreams - dreams Pierre insists they can share.

In A Mind of Her Own, McLain taps into the luminous mind and complex heart of a singular woman caught between order and chaos, science and love in the period just before the world would learn her name.]]> 2 Paula McLain Lynne 4 3.18 2019
author: Paula McLain
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 195791689 From the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance
but at what cost?

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,â€� May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nightsâ€� respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”]]> 262 Helen Phillips 1668008831 Lynne 5 3.49 2024
author: Helen Phillips
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 199603377 A senior citizens� center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from New York Times-bestselling author Clare Pooley

When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizensâ€� Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.

The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.]]> 352 Clare Pooley 0593512030 Lynne 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: Clare Pooley
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 212923993 A mother and son, estranged but yearning for reunion, reckon at last with the secret that has kept them apart for decades in this highly anticipated novel by "one of the country's most talented writers" (Wall Street Journal�)

At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of his clients only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.

Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago banished from her mind the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life forever, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.

With unsurpassed emotional depth,ÌęMothers and SonsÌęreveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and what might be restored by facing it. In his spellbinding new novel, Adam HaslettÌędemonstrates yet again his mastery of “a rich assortment of literary giftsâ€� (New York Times).]]> 336 Adam Haslett 0316574716 Lynne 0 to-read 3.80 2025
author: Adam Haslett
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 71499379
Debut author Kate Khavari deftly entwines a pulse-pounding mystery with the struggles of a woman in a male-dominated field in 1923 London.

Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh is determined to blaze a new trail at the University College London, but with her colleaguesâ€� beliefs about women’s academic inabilities and not-so-subtle hints that her deceased father’s reputation paved her way into the botany department, she feels stymied at every turn.

When she attends a dinner party for the school, she expects to engage in conversations about the university's large expedition to the Amazon. What she doesn’t expect is for Mrs. Henry, one of the professorsâ€� wives, to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin.

Dr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect and evidence quickly mounts. Joined by fellow researcher--and potential romantic interest--Alexander Ashton, Saffron uses her knowledge of botany as she explores steamy greenhouses, dark gardens, and deadly poisons to clear Maxwell's name.

Will she be able to uncover the truth, or will her investigation land her on the murderer’s list, in this entertaining examination of society’s expectations?]]> 320 Kate Khavari 1639102701 Lynne 0 to-read 3.51 2022
author: Kate Khavari
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 219296020
“A brutally honest analysis of how the world failed the test of Hamas’s brutalityâ€� â€� Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman

After the Israel, 7 October and the Crisis of Civilisation is the explosive new book from celebrated columnist and author Brendan O’Neill.

It is an unflinching account of how the West failed the moral test of 7 October. It documents, in chilling detail, how the West’s academics, activists and commentariat ended up making excuses for Hamas’s pogrom â€� the worst act of violence against the Jews since the Holocaust.

On university campuses, on our streets and in the press, people took the side, not of the Jews, but of their murderous persecutors. We even witnessed the return of the twisted ideology of atrocity denial, as the activist class accused the Jewish State of exaggerating or even inventing the events of 7 October.

How did this happen? Why did so many in our educated elites shrug their shoulders over the worst pogrom in almost 80 years? Why did “anti-fascistsâ€� cosy up to the fascists of Hamas?

This book is an unsparing examination of the moral disorder of the 21st-century West. Frank, fearless and incisive, it argues that our moral failures after 7 October exposed just how far we have drifted from the path of Enlightenment. It is a must-read for everyone concerned about the safety of the Jews and the future of the West.]]> 161 Brendan O'Neill 1068719311 Lynne 0 to-read 4.58
author: Brendan O'Neill
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.58
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]]> 217182494 A family drama set in Shanghai, where a fractured American family faces its complicated past

Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: Their twenty-two-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaksâ€� marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,â€� they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is as it seems.]]> 288 Jennifer Haigh 0316577138 Lynne 0 to-read 3.81
author: Jennifer Haigh
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.81
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date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> 205436030 A mesmerizing new novel from the author of the story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life

Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his.

On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed.

In spellbinding prose, Susan Minot has crafted a luminous novel about erotic obsession, and the hunger for intimacy, communication, and oblivion. Don't Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.]]> 320 Susan Minot 0593802446 Lynne 0 to-read 3.14 2024
author: Susan Minot
name: Lynne
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> 50403512
A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing.

You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is something has changed.

The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right something has changed .

This is the story of all that was to Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.

Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.]]> 390 Niall Williams 1635576318 Lynne 0 to-read 4.27 2019
author: Niall Williams
name: Lynne
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]>